Winter Blues Test

A winter blues test asks how your mood, energy, sleep, appetite and social life change between summer and the dark months. This one has nine statements and one question about past winters. The nine add up to a score from 0 to 27 that reads as no clear winter pattern, a mild winter dip or a strong winter pattern. It is a self-check for reflection, not a medical test.

The questions are Lovon's own. They follow the changes the US National Institute of Mental Health lists for the winter pattern: lower mood and energy, oversleeping, craving carbohydrates, and pulling away from people, a feeling it describes as hibernating (NIMH, 2023). The ranges are our plain-language reading of the total, not norms from a study.

1. Answer each statement for how the dark months compare with summer for you: No change, A little, Clearly or A lot. 2. Say whether it has happened in past winters. A change that comes back every year means more than one hard winter. 3. Read your result. The ideas that fit the areas that changed most come first. 4. Pick your city, or type your latitude, to see today's daylight, the light lost since the June solstice and the days until December 21. 5. Save this week's mood and energy, and add the weekly winter check to your calendar. It stops by itself on March 31.

The second time you come back, the page opens with your winter so far: one point a week for mood and energy. A few weeks of that line tell you more than any single quiz, and the same check works next winter too.

The NIMH puts it simply: many people feel down when the days get shorter in fall and winter and feel better in spring when longer days return. That is the winter blues. Sometimes the change is bigger and affects how a person feels, thinks and behaves for months. That is seasonal affective disorder, often called seasonal depression or winter depression. The NIMH describes it as a type of depression with a recurring seasonal pattern, with symptoms lasting about four to five months of the year, and it is only called seasonal when the pattern returns at least two years in a row.

A quiz cannot tell the two apart. Only a doctor or licensed professional can say whether what you have is seasonal affective disorder. What a quiz can do is help you notice a pattern and describe it clearly when you talk to one.

It is also worth separating the dark months from the holidays. The NIMH notes that the holiday blues come from the stresses of a time of year, while the winter pattern follows daylight, not the calendar. If December is hard because of family, money or plans, the holiday stress guide is the better read.

Researchers are still working out the causes. The NIMH summarizes what studies point to so far: sunlight affects the molecules that keep serotonin levels steady, people with the winter pattern tend to make too much melatonin, which adds to sleepiness, and lower vitamin D in winter may add to both. It is also more common the farther north you live, where winter days are shorter. The NIMH gives the example that people in Alaska or New England are more likely to have it than people in Texas or Florida.

The daylight panel uses the equations NOAA's Global Monitoring Laboratory publishes for the sun's position (NOAA, General Solar Position Calculations). For each day it works out the sun's declination and the equation of time, then the hour angle at which the sun's center sits 0.833 degrees below the horizon, the standard allowance for the bending of light by the air and the size of the sun's disk. That gives sunrise, sunset and the length of the day. Everything is calculated in your browser.

By those equations, Seattle gets about 8 h 26 min of daylight on December 21 and Miami about 10 h 32 min. Anchorage gets 5 h 27 min. The table under the tool lists 44 US cities.

1. Morning light. Get outside within an hour or two of waking, even on grey days, and open the curtains as soon as you are up. 2. Daylight at midday. Use the brightest hours: lunch outside, a short walk, a seat by a window. 3. Movement. It is the first thing to go when it is dark at 5 pm, so put one kind you can do in any weather in the calendar. 4. A steady wake-up time, weekends included, so your body clock has an anchor when the light does not. 5. Plans made in advance. A weekly call, a class, a meal with a friend: things you enjoy, set up before the dark weeks so you do not have to decide when you feel flat. 6. A light box, discussed with a doctor first. The NIMH describes the usual approach as sitting near a 10,000-lux light box for about 30 to 45 minutes a day, usually first thing in the morning, from fall to spring. People with some eye conditions, or who take medicines that make them sensitive to light, need medical advice before using one.

For energy and sleep, the energy audit and the sleep calculator help you find what to change. When staying in becomes the default, check your social battery, and build a dopamine menu of small things that lift you. There is more on habits in our guide to the winter blues and on how sleep affects mood.

Talk to a doctor if your mood is low most of the day, nearly every day, for two weeks or more; if it gets in the way of work, home or your relationships; if it comes back most winters; or if you are sleeping or eating far more than usual or have lost interest in most things. Ask before starting a light box, vitamin D or any supplement. If what you are living with sounds more like seasonal depression than the blues, a doctor can talk through the options with you.

It cannot name a condition, and its ranges are not norms from research. One winter is not a pattern: a move, a loss or a hard year can make any winter heavy. It only asks about winter, while the NIMH notes that a less common summer pattern exists too. For a fuller read of how the last week has been, the CORE-10 gives a weekly distress score, and the 60-second check-in and the mood tracker let you follow your mood day by day all winter.